Becoming A Thrifty Food Shopper

I like to think of myself a pretty thrifty food shopper already, although after watching the series ‘Eat Well For Less’ on BBC One a while back it has played on my mind that there are still a few changes that I could put into place to save a bit more on food which leaves more to spend on going out and having fun!

I recently took the big step of moving away from my super easy Tesco home delivery service and moved over to the increasingly popular Aldi.  For a while I had been a bit snobby about shopping in there, thinking they must be selling really poor products if they are so cheap; but I could not have been more wrong.  Don’t get me wrong my stress levels have tripled again as I had come a custom to a little man kindly bringing my neatly packed shopping right to my kitchen table and I have now reverted back to trying to control at least two little ones around the supermarket; one of my past posts will tell you how I try to make this a slightly less painful task.  It does however save me upwards of £50 a week and as a lady said to me the other week whilst I was pushing two screaming babies in the rain through the car park “think of the money you are saving”.

This was clearly my biggest and best move so far but I am now going to try and shop locally for things such as meat as it’s said that you will only pay a little more for your meat and you will get much better quality by going to a butchers.

I have also seen many friends have to close small businesses of late due to people opting to shop online or use the bigger retailers.  It is so sad and that is why the whole comunity spirit is being completly wiped out and soon High Street shopping will be a thing of the past.

Having being cooped up for the past few day feeling poorly I needed to get the boys our of the house to enjoy this lovely sunshine, so a trip to the park and a bit of food shopping were on the list to see if this was going to be another thrifty move for us.

First stop was the Bettameats butchery in Banstead High Street where I was greeted by a super friendly and helpful butcher that helped me chose what would be best for me and best value for money.  Only £27 later I walked away with some fantastic looking meats that will feed all seven of us for well over a week.

Our next stop was Banstead Fruiterers just across the road.  Again I was greeted with a smile and the offer to try before I buy which unfortunately my son took him up on the offer and would not leave the poor mans strawberries alone! 

We left there with plenty of fruit and salad to last the week and I would guess that it’s half the price I would have paid at the supermarket.

Very pleased with my savings and the warm feeling that  I had done my bit to keep the local High Street thriving we set ourselves up in the park to take in the beautiful sunshine and sample some of our goods.  This will be a new way of shopping that I will be keeping up from now on.